Coimbatore-based Abhanaya and Illakya are among the 71 hearing and speech impaired students who were successfully placed in various companies during a campus recruitment drive.

The two girls are the alumni of St. Louis College for the Deaf, Chennai, which offers Bachelor of Commerce (B.Com), Master of Commerce (M.Com), and Bachelor of Computer Applications (BCA) programmes for the hearing and speech impaired. Thanks to the Corporate Social Responsibility (CRS) initiative of a corporative house that prefers to remain anonymous, about 71 students of the college have been placed in companies across the state. The corporate house sponsored the training of the nearly one hundred final year students of the college. Kasim Basith, Director of Opportunity Infotech worked on training the students and also ensured that they are placed.

The final year students of this college underwent rigorous training in basics of computers. A few students were also trained in Tally. Kasim trained the students in various batches.

An event, called ‘We Are Your Voice,’ was organized. This was an ice-breaking session for the Human Resource (HR) managers and the hearing- and speech-impaired students. “The HR managers from companies like Wipro, TVS, and Ashok Leyland, among others, participated in this event. About 100 companies had attended the We Are Your Voice session. The students displayed their capabilities before the HR managers,” Kasim shares.

Following the event, 18 companies showed interest in recruiting the hearing and speech impaired students. Out of the 98 students that Kasim trained, 71 are placed in various companies across Tamil Nadu, in positions like web designers, graphic designers, administrative executives, and accountant executives. Today, these candidates take home salaries starting from Rs.8000 to rs.15,000 per month.

Coimbatore-based Abhinaya and Illakya have already joined work, Kasim confirms. He adds that considering the potential Coimbatore has, he has plans of conducting a job expo for Persons with Disability (PWD), in June this year.

Right now Kasim is working on creating a database of the positions that are vacant in various companies that showed interest in recruiting persons with disabilities. As part of the next step, Kasim will match the profile of the alumni of St. Louis College with the requirements of the corporate house. This way, he is confident that many more candidates will be placed.